When Bergdahl left, some stayed, served and died

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is shown with a Taliban commander in a video released by the Taliban in 2010. (EPA photo)

Most Americans know the name of the soldier who set down his gun, walked away from his post in Afghanistan and became a captive of the Taliban.

That soldier whom President Barack Obama ransomed by offering the Taliban what they've wanted for years:

The release of five suspected terrorists from the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, a deal that allows them to circle back and kill more Americans.

The soldier at the center of things is Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. His face and name are front and center in the news.

But what about the others who were killed searching for him when he left his post in 2009? Can you name them?

CNN's Jake Tapper first reported their names, doing stories on the grief of the families. And by doing so, Tapper told Americans something more important than who won or who lost in the politics of this messy business.

There might be more names. And there is much about the hunt for Bergdahl that we still don't know. The White House is in full public relations panic, and there is no political advantage for Team Obama to discuss the dead.

Still, the names below have been widely reported as those of men killed trying to find Bergdahl when he disappeared into the arms of the Taliban.

"What we hope will not be lost on the American people is the true heroism of the soldiers who risked their safety to relentlessly attempt to rescue Bowe," said Martinek's mother, Cheryl Brandes. "One of those brave men was our son and brother Matthew Martinek."

Martinek lived in DeKalb, was a graduate of Bartlett High School and played on the football team.

He was sent to Afghanistan in 2009. In Paktika province, he was killed when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with a roadside bomb, small-arms fire and a rocket-propelled grenade.

It would be a mistake to say — as some of Obama's critics have claimed — that Bergdahl led to their deaths. That's not fair to Bergdahl or the president. Their lives were at risk just by being in Afghanistan.

They could have been killed on other duty. But the duty they were given was to find the missing American. Some who were given that job died.

The wives, children and parents of the dead aren't interested in quibbling. Their loved ones didn't lay their rifles down and wander off to find the Taliban. They did their duty.

Bergdahl apparently did not. But we don't know what exactly was in his mind, what fears and perhaps even fantasies motivated him.

Obama looks foolish or worse in all of this. He looks like a politician who desperately wanted a feel-good photo op in the White House Rose Garden with Bergdahl's family. And now he owns it.

He stood with Bergdahl's mother and the father who'd issued, then deleted, a tweet on May 28 saying, "I am still working to free all Guantanamo prisoners. God will repay for the death of every Afghan child, ameen!"

And still, the president wanted to stand with the family and tell Americans that we don't leave our people behind.

Then he sent out national security adviser Susan Rice on the Sunday talk shows to speak of Bergdahl in heroic terms. This is the same Rice who went on the Sunday talk shows just before Obama's re-election to lie to the American people about what triggered the attack in Benghazi.

We left people behind there, four Americans, including former SEALs who called for help that never came.

The other day, the president stood on the beaches of Normandy and talked of D-Day and the common purpose shown by those elderly World War II veterans before him.

His voice was measured. There was a touch of emotion, yes, but he looked like a leader making a good speech.

The man almost always looks good making a speech, and with the Bergdahl fiasco hounding him, the speech to the old vets was almost hypnotic, until you remembered that Obama shut old veterans out of the Washington monuments in order to make Republicans look bad during the sequestration fight.

Some Democrats huff and puff and defend the president over the Taliban trade, though an increasing number are beginning to shy away as the November midterms approach. Politicians are adept at raising their moistened fingers to test the winds.

And the winds of November don't look good for the Democrats right now.

Republicans meanwhile, are predictably on the attack. Make no mistake: Some of the same GOP voices who rip on the president for freeing Bergdahl would be shouting in anger had Obama left the sergeant there. And Democrats who defend a Democratic president would be pulling out their hair and shrieking like skinned cats if a Republican president had cut such a deal.

So the politics and the barking are what you'd expect. Those who want to defend the president are as adept at verbal gymnastics as those who would condemn him.

What the freed Taliban fighters end up doing, and how Republicans and Democrats skin each other, is the stuff of the future.

But I can't help thinking about the past, and those who may have died in the search for the troubled young soldier: